Envoy has cruised over 1,000NM since 1 June, and now back in Turkey

Since leaving Marmaris 1 June, and cruising to Rhodos, Karpathos, Crete, Santorini, Astipalaia, Kalimnos, and Bodrum in Turkey we’ve now logged over 1,000NM.
We cleared out of Greek waters on 2 September at the island of Kalimnos. This involved first visiting the Coastguard to get our Transit Log stamped, then going by taxi to the Police Station to have our passports stamped, then back to the Coastguard to show our passports, then to the Port Office to pay 5 Euro, and finally back to the Coastguard to get our departure form. As you can imagine, you have to allow a little time for this. The Coastguard office and the Police Station looked like something out of an old movie set, being very dilapidated buildings with shabby paint, old furniture, and jumbled electrical wiring on the walls. No computers were to be seen, and everything was written down using carbon paper to make copies, but all the officials were friendly and helpful.
In Kalimnos we also got some more water using our 30 litre drums. We are always on the scrounge for water, and only need two drums per day. There’s plenty of water available if you go into a port, but that’s generally a hassle. You not only have to pay the port fees, but also for the water. So we take the drums in our dinghy, and find a free source. Sometimes there are grocery stores on the wharf, and we buy some supplies and ask for water from their hose – never a problem. The water here is mostly not suitable for drinking, and we go through about three 1.5L bottles per day for drinking, making tea (most important), and cooking.
Clearing in to Turkey requires an agent nowadays – a change since our last visit. So we cruised the short 20NM distance from Kalimnos to Bodrum, anchored off the marina beneath the Crusader’s castle, and went ashore to find an agent. This was no problem, and two hours later, and Euro 185 poorer we were cleared in. Now Envoy can stay fairly indefinitely in Turkey, but Di & I can only stay 90 days. That means in early December we’ll need to get a ferry from Marmaris to Rhodos for the day, then re-enter Turkey.
After the barren Greek islands, it was great to see the greenness of Turkey again.
We went to see Vodafone to buy more internet air-time for our USB. For some reason the USB stick wouldn’t work on Di’s laptop (although it was fine when we left Turkey), so we went to Turkcell, which is their equivalent of Telecom, and bought another USB stick, and that works fine. This now gives us the security of two sources of internet access. Although phones are fairly straight forward here, it seems to be a constant hassle getting internet access, and we need to do more research on this. Would be good to have a system where you could get economical internet access wherever you are without having to change USBs and SIM cards, and having to go to Vodafone, Turkcell etc to buy more time.
Since Bodrum we’ve cruised north covering some new territory. One interesting place is Kazili Iskelisi in the Gulf of Korfezi. This is an estuary, not unlike the Mahurangi; very calm and not many people around. In fact there was only one yacht there plus some fishing boats, then seven charter yachts came in, but all went together on one restaurant jetty. In the last couple of weeks we’ve only been in one bay where there was more than one other boat overnight. In some bays the local “gullets” come in with day-trippers, but they’re all gone by 1800 hours.
In this area there are many large fish farms. Some cruisers complain that the farms take up too many anchorages, but you’ve got to look at it from the Turks’ point of view; the fish farms provide food and lots of employment.
We have been surprised by the level of development of holiday resorts and hotels along the coast, and have seen dozens of them, many quite large and usually consisting of 100 or so identical villas set back from the beach. In many cases it seems that little thought was given to style, or to landscaping around the developments and some of them are ugly concrete boxes, and blots on the landscape. Considering the population of Turkey is 75m, with a growing standard of living, they’ve gotta holiday somewhere.
As I complete this we’re anchored off a new and very flash marina at Altinkum, and during the next four days we’re cruising about 60NM further north to Cigasik to meet Don & Kerrin, flying into Izmir on 18th.
Log
Days aboard Envoy this trip: 161
Engine hours and distance this trip: 220hrs, 1,060NM
Technical: Again I’m pleased to say no major issues.
In Bodrum the Vacuflush guest toilet was fixed by their local service agent. The pump needed rebuilding, but this took only a couple of hours, and it’s now working fine again, and holding vacuum. Toilets are a regular problem on boats, and I can remember many years ago when Frank Curulli was so enraged by constant toilet problems on his boat that he ripped it out, and threw it into the Motuihe Channel before replacing it with a more reliable unit.
A few days ago the temperature alarm on the Yanmar wing engine sounded. I stopped the engine, and found the sea water strainer had some weed in it, but I was not sure if there was sufficient weed to stop the water flow. After clearing this weed out, and restarting the engine there was still no water coming out of the exhaust. I thought the water pump impellor was probably damaged from running dry for the time it took for the engine to overheat and sound the alarm. The Yanmar’s water pump is very hard to access (because it’s low on the rear of the engine, and there’s not much space between the bulkhead and the engine), and the impellor has to be replaced by feel – a bit beyond me. Fortunately there are Yanmar service agents nearly everywhere, and we had it fixed by a guy, Savas, who does only Yanmar engines based at Didim Marina, Altinkum. Even he said the pump was difficult to access. It turned out the pump itself had worn out (nothing to do with any weed in the strainer). The pump’s vee-belt pulley is held on a keyway to the water pump drive shaft. It was the keyway which had failed, so the pulley was not driving the pump.
As often mentioned we have considerable spare parts aboard, wait for it - including a brand new complete Yanmar water pump. This was fitted and all fine, the failed pump is being rebuilt to become the new spare.
I changed the Lugger’s oil at 200 engine hours. This is quite easy on Envoy, as we have an oil-change pumping system connected to each engine via a manifold. You simply remove the old oil filter, open the valve on the manifold to connect with the engine you want to change, start the pump, and then pump the oil out into an empty drum. Normally the new oil is then pumped back out of a 20L drum, but this time I couldn’t buy a 20Ldrum, so had to pour in 20 x one litre packs manually. Then you fit the new oil filter, and all done.
We’ve now used the last of the diesel from 2007, and are running on new fuel bought in Rhodos in June. Because we’re not doing huge distances I’m not keeping the tanks full; firstly there’s no point in carrying the weight, and secondly it’s best to have fresh fuel. We have four tanks, each holding about 940L, for a total of 3,773L. I like to always have some fuel sloshing around in each tank to keep the inside of the iron tanks coated with diesel, but today we were down to about 1,000L, so bought another 1,200L to give us 2,200L -about 275 hours, or two months running. Cost here is TL 3.01 per litre – a little under NZ$3.00 litre.
This trip we’ve been more conscious of Envoy’s cosmetic care. Keeping on top of this requires only a little time, but regularity is the key. The most important thing is to always wash the salt off with fresh water. Salt soon puts rust stains on stainless steel, and on the topsides gelcoat the salt attracts dirt. It also deteriorates the varnish. A wash down sometimes needs doing daily if we’ve been through heavy spray, or sometimes every few days. There’s a great product called “Miracle Cloth” made by Seafit, USA. After removing salt from the stainless, we let it dry, and then use the Miracle Cloth to quickly bring up the stainless like new. It also leaves a slight trace of waxy coating which gives some protection - highly recommended!